No posts by merchant/company/store/etailer
representatives that are intended to drive traffic to their site

No posts/polls by merchant/company/store/etailer
representatives that poll/survey/"mine" the Goldfishlegs community

No posts to auction listings (this is considered "advertising")

No posts that contain affiliate links, referral
links/requests, or "Vote for me" / "Rate me" links, nor text that somehow gives you an entry in a pseudo-contest or a kickback of some sort.

No posts by individuals that link to a
site they are affiliated with.

"Self"-promotion is not allowed, where "self" includes an entity such as a website or company.

No "spamvertising" and no advertising thinly veiled as "useful information".

No emailing or PMing users ads or promotional links.

No posts or PMs soliciting users to join a website, chat group, forum, etc, that you are affiliated with.

No solicitations for donations of any kind. (scams are everywhere!)

Basically, you can not post anything that
will benefit/reward/compensate you or your company, even if it's not monetary -- web traffic is considered a "benefit". The Bowl is provided to share information, not to serve as as your very own personal promotion outlet. New users will scrutinized intently in this regard.

(This may seem harsh coming out of Juju's cute little mouth, but without this rule, the discussions would be spoiled by spam. This restriction exists because site owners/affiliates have and will use the Bowl as a free advertising resource, and eventually, we'd be overrun with webmasters & marketers coming here to advertise. This restriction applies to any site: commercial or not, free or not, charity or not, competing with GFL or not. Juju doesn't want spam to clutter up the place -- period. The Bowl is not a supermarket bulletin board!)

A) Post with SubstanceThere is a phenomenon on internet discussion areas known as "Me Too". This is when someone expresses a thought, and everyone replies with two words: "Me too!", "Me too!", "Me too!", "Me too!".

Replying with a few inane words (or just smilies) is of no use to anyone. Worse yet, it adds clutter, wastes time, and dupes readers into opening the discussion only to find an utterly useless contribution which leads to frustration, aggravation, and run on sentences.

Once in a while a short, useless message may be appropriate, but most of the time it's not. Use of such replies will be deleted. This is not a chat room, so Post with Substance!

This also applies to post "flooding". Flooding is multiple excessive posts intended to fill up the area with crap -- these will be deleted without warning or notification.

B) Stay on Topic
"Anarchy" and "Viable Community" are mortal enemies. To avoid chaos here in the Bowl, Juju has decreed that all humans have to "Stay on Topic". What this means is that you should not "hijack" a discussion by posting something that is irrelevant to the topic. This will derail the original topic and throw it off in another direction -- not only is this chaotic, it's also disrespectful to the person that started the discussion.

So if you have something unrelated to say, START A NEW DISCUSSION instead.

This isn't a very strict rule and some minor divergence is welcome, but humans who repeatedly throw discussions off topic will be warned once. Any future off-topic posts will be deleted without notice.
Like point A) above, you can do it once in a while, but don't make it a habit -- show some respect and start your own separate discussion instead.

Rule #4: No Intolerant, Distasteful, or Hateful Posts

Juju was once naive enough to think that the following "rules" were "common sense", but was quickly humbled by the internet community.
You cannot post anything that is:

FINEPRINT:
Juju reserves the right to change/modify/ammend any of these rules at any time, without notice, just in case a smarty-pants finds a loophole. This means you.

The Rationale Behind the Rules

Juju wants the GFL experience to be a smooth and productive one, not an anarchaic, free-for-all wasteland. Hence, the "strict" rules. The rules aren't in place to make Juju feel powerful -- yes, Juju's got an ego, but even his megalomaniacal ego isn't that petty.

The rules aren't in place to restrict personal expression either -- quite the polar opposite, in fact. They are in place to allow the community to grow without crumbling under its own weight (the technical term for it is "scaling").

The rules address a much larger picture than any individual person (e.g. you). The needs of the community outweigh the needs of the one, so these "strict" rules will irk (i.e. piss off) some people and Juju is fully aware of that fact. You know what they say about pleasing everyone, right? So, the bottom line: you either abide by these rules or you don't participate in this community. Pretty simple, huh?

Lawyer Mumbo Jumbo

If you're a lawyer looking to sue Juju or any of his undernourished slaves, or you're just a plain ol' meany looking to stir things up, here is the legalese fine-print version of the rules:WARNING: Lawyer to English translator (not included) may be required to comprehend and/or decipher any of the following.

By pressing the Agree button when you register you declare that you are over the age of 13. If you are 13 or under, you can still visit, but your mommy and daddy can't sue anyone if you see a naughty word or picture here.

Although the administrators and moderators of Juju's Message Bowl! will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off this forum, it is impossible for us to review all messages. All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners of Juju's Message Bowl! or GoldfishLegs or Jelsoft Enterprises Limited (developers of vBulletin) will be held responsible for the content of any message.
Considering the real-time nature of the forum, it is impossible for us to review all messages or confirm the validity of information posted. Please remember that we do not actively monitor the contents of posted messages and are not responsible for any messages posted. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message. The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of Goldfishlegs or any entity associated with Goldfishlegs. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by email or by using the "Report this post" feature. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.

By clicking the Agree button when you register, you warrant that you will not post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexual abuse oriented, pornographic, sexually-explicit, threatening, distasteful, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law (even if it's really funny!), or insulting to anyone based on gender, lifestyle, religion, ethnicity, or race. Any derogatory post referencing any persons race, color, creed, or sexual preference (or any allegations thereof, justified or not) will be deleted ASAP, any repeat offenders will be banned. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material without permission unless the copyright is owned by you. You also agree not to post message/images promoting illegal activities or drug use.

Although Goldfishlegs does not and cannot review the messages posted and is not responsible for the content of any of these messages, we reserve the right to delete any message or membership for any or no reason whatsoever. You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Goldfishlegs, Jelsoft Enterprises (the makers of the bulletin board software), and their agents with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s). We at Goldfishlegs also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you.

You agree that all your posts become property of this site as soon as you submit the post. You have no legal rights as to the removal or archiving of said posts. You may at any time delete or edit your individual posts (not threads). If you choose to have your account deleted, your posts will NOT be deleted and your username will still be visible (it will not be blanked out or removed). You may not delete threads or the first post of a thread. You may edit any of your own posts if you are registered.

What it all boils down to is that you have no legal rights here. Access is a privilege and does not entitle you to anything whatsoever.

USERNAMES: A username cannot contain the name of a company, website, or url of any sort (including partial URLs). A username cannot contain profanity,obscenity or other similarly nasty words (the exact list of disallowed words is not posted and is constantly changing). You cannot impersonate another user by choosing a very similar username.

PRIVATE MESSAGES: While Private Messages are "private" for the most part, note that the messages are stored in our database and are retrievable and will be surrendered if legally required to do so. Private Messages will also be retrieved to confirm any harassment/abuse complaints (e.g. if a user allegedly spams the membership or harasses/threatens another user, we will need to view the Private Messages to confirm the allegations).

NAMED/OWNED THREADS:
Thread ownership does not exist here. You cannot start a thread and attempt to limit access to it by harrassing people you don't like. The title of any thread may not contain your username or the username of another member. (This rule may sound silly, but named threads would give the appearance of cliques and deter others from posting for fear of hurting the feelings of the thread "owner" or make some people feel "not welcome". If no one owns the thread, no one will feel slighted. This is a public forum and no one owns or has a right to any thread. :) )

THREAD BUMPING:
"Bumping" is when you respond to your own thread just to get it to "jump" to the top of the list. This is fine most of the time as long as you don't do it excessively and there's a good reason for it (e.g. deadline coming up). In any case, you can bump your thread a maximum of once every 72 hours (3 days).

DEALS/FREEBIES/CONTESTS "TAKEN" FROM OTHER SITES:
These are allowed here. After all, sharing is in keeping with the spirit of the internet. Referencing the source is always good etiquette (i.e. the site name and/or link), but that's not something the moderators of GFL will police. Sites that don't want their info "shared" need to make their pages private and limit access to select users. If one of your "select" users posts something from one of your private pages, you must take it up with them. We will not honour any removal requests in these cases.

Voliators of the above rules will be thrown in Juju's Chest of 17 Tortures where they will be savagely nibbled on for 40 days and 40 nights. Yes, really.